laxam
10mo ago
There was no momentum in 2010.
The Republicans won the largest seat number in the House they had won since 1946 and the largest individual seat gain for either party since 1948. And, of course, the momentum didn't stop there: They won more seats total in the House in 2014 than they'd had in any year since 1928. The GOP went from controlling 10 state legislatures in 2010 to controlling 25 after the 2016 elections, they took enough individual chambers to drive the Democrats down to unified control of just 5 total state legislatures, and went from occupying 23 to occupying 34 gubernatorial seats. Obama apparently presided over the Democrats losing more than 1000 downballot offices in his two terms.
The Republican Party was at an apex of its power going into 2016 that it hadn't seen in a century. Trump barely squeezed out an EC victory from that and ran behind the rest of the party everywhere, then presided over a Democratic landslide in 2018.
This:
The Republicans didn't do anything wrong
is nonsense. They totally failed to live up to the expectations of a big portion of their base and so they got saddled with Donald Trump, who drives turnout for the Democrats at least as well as he does for Republicans, and dramatically better in midterm years. Had they done something to appease enough of the base that Trump's impact on the 2016 primary was as big as his impact on the 2012 primary and the Party went into the 2016 election with anyone more acceptable to the broader public, we'd be in a wildly different place.
laxam
10mo ago
Bush's lead had disappeared by the time Trump started taking off. It was essentially an open race and, to be honest, would probably have ended up being either between Rubio and Cruz or a three way between them and Kasich, depending on if Kasich and Rubio could consolidate. However, Rubio's pro-immigration image would have turned off the people who went for Trump in real life, so I could see it easily going to Cruz.
He's a weak vessel, but we didn't know that in 2016. He could probably handle Clinton fairly easily, especially if he focused on immigration like Trump did.
laxam
10mo ago
I don't know if you remember the era well or not, but I do. The Republican Party of that time wasn't 'neocon' (a term in ridiculously bad odour, something no one wanted to be associated with), this was the TEA Party party. And they delivered, at least partially as a way of being seen as fighting Obama. We got several government shutdowns or near shutdowns, budget fights for the ages, and Sequestration, which included deep cuts into ostensible sacred cows like the defense budget (something I can't imagine the 'neocon' boogiemen ever doing).
Looking back, it's a shame we didn't do more. The Federal fiscal situation is out of control and is on schedule to get worse, not better, as time goes on. I was outright disgusted when the Biden administration bragged about keeping cuts to 1% in 2023 budget negotiations. We'll have a crisis on our hands within the decade because we failed to do enough in the 90s (no balanced budget amendment), we failed to do enough in the 2010s (no path to balance and the tax cuts under Trump), and we're failing to do anything right now.
laxam
10mo ago
I was digging through Google for old articles about Harris from when she was elected AG and a huge number of them were direct comparisons to Obama when he was the Hot New Thing. She's been pretty directly groomed for this and she still can't do much more than read from a teleprompter.
laxam
10mo ago
Against Clinton, that's not as much an anchor as it should be. She was the anti-charisma and had the reputation of a flaming pile of shit among the general public.
I think pretty much any Republican who could speak coherently and with even a modicum of force could have beaten her in 2016, but Republicans like Jeb or Rubio would have sparked off a base revolt, anyway, while in office. Only someone who could credibly pursue immigration restriction would have been able to please the base and those two are the exact opposite.
laxam
10mo ago
Bush's lead was already shrinking before Trump came down the escalator. He had an early lead because he started with more name recognition, but he was not a strong candidate along any dimension except that vague sense of competency that came from having done a good job in Florida, which he failed parlay into actual success on the campaign trail.
Immigration was already an issue prior to 2016. The whole reason the autopsy had happened after 2012 was because the Republicans were already tentatively on the restrictionists side of the brewing crisis and had been for a while -- pretty much the entirety of the highly restrictive current legal environment was passed by Republicans in the 90s and 2000s. Unfortunately the only Republican President to serve after those laws came into effect was an immigration booster and Obama was never going to enforce the letter or the spirit of the law, so they never worked.
Cruz came from the right wing of the party on this debate. He may not have made it the center of his campaign -- but he may well have -- without Trump, but he already had the reputation and had already made it a important plank of his platform.
laxam
10mo ago
Dramatic shrinkage of the deficit, from almost 10% of GDP in 2010 to less than 2.5% of GDP in 2015, was the primary immediate accomplishment.
The Trump judges were coming no matter who the GOP President was after 2016. They were fruits of the Federalist Society cultivating actually philosophically conservative jurists for several generations and were chosen by advisors and movement conservatives. Whoever was formally appointing them after 2016 would be appointing the same people, or similar people.
laxam
10mo ago
The war was a big deal at the time, so it was no small thing. He had credibility on it, too, rather than being a flip flopper. Combined with his personal charisma and the dissatisfaction of the on-going financial crisis and all sorts of people had something to be excited about.
laxam
10mo ago
There were no great candidates in 2016, but probably any of them but Bush could have beaten Clinton fairly easily. Bush's name would have dragged him down harder with the kinds of voters he needed to make up for the lack of immigration restrictionists that we really got to see when it was just the primaries.
There was a time when people were thinking, "I we really going to end up with Bushes and Clinton's again?!"
laxam
10mo ago
Maybe I'm the one that's off my rocker
You are. Clinton was a profoundly weak, unpopular candidate. She had 35 years in the public spotlight and there just was not anything to like there for the majority of Americans. No one running in 2016 could have beaten her in the landslide she deserved, but the 2016 election was Generic, Boring Republican Candidate's to lose.
2016 was a very Republican year and Clinton was a terrible candidate. As it was, Republicans across the country ran ahead of Trump, from House races to Senate, Gubernatorial, and even further downballot. A more boring election where you don't get all the negative partisanship Trump creates that has lower turnout than 2012 instead of higher turnout benefits those other Republicans even more.
laxam
10mo ago
No, it was absolutely said at the time.
Here's an example from early on in the 2016 election process.
Here's another one from later on
You can find a lot of them. She was not well liked.
laxam
10mo ago
I'm not sure. I think Trump could beat Harris pretty easily if he were ten years younger, but we won't really know the contours of the election until it's over.
laxam
10mo ago
I'm waiting for a non-self-referential definition of gender that doesn't just mean 'sex'.
So far, nobody has answered me.
laxam
10mo ago
Isn't this just the truscum/tucute divide?
Yes, and the tucute side has won through sheer exercise of social power. Now, we must suffer the consequences of the incoherence of their position.
laxam
10mo ago
Luckily, our Constitution bans titles of nobility. In Constitutionalist America, no one is allowed to be black or gay, only the subaltern white or straight.
laxam
10mo ago
the previous conservative mayor John Tory
Sometimes, nominative determinism just becomes unbelievably on the nose.
laxam
10mo ago
You take on a risk and want to restrict others to deal with it?
Sounds like fascism, to me.
laxam
10mo ago
I think Trump actually has gotten worse at getting a point out. When he wanted to cite Snopes fact checking Charlottesville at the Biden debate he couldn't quite land the point in a way where you knew what the hell he was talking about if you weren't already familiar with what he was trying to say.
laxam
10mo ago
But they went into it saying "I want to write a great sci-fi story that is also diverse", not "I want to write a diverse sci-fi show". The goal was to make a good TV show, not to ensure that black lesbians got more air-time.
It's probably further up the pipeline, too. They're recruiting writers who aren't particularly good at their trade, but they have the right politics and personal identity, so they get hired.
laxam
10mo ago
And that sort of classical liberalism was controversial in the 60's when Star Trek was doing it with the OS and, if not controversial, at least something people had in mind as a sore point when TNG was doing it in the 80's.
laxam
10mo ago
Media was dark back when it was worse, but it wasn't grimdark and it was good.
And it could play its darkness off really lightly. Crocodile Dundee is very family friendly for how it portrays the dregs of Manhattan in the 1980's.
2016 wasn't a flash in the pan, it was a brick wall that all the momentum the right had been building since 2010 smashed to pieces against.
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